Alpha 59 Update - Map Expansion - 22nd April 2022

Alpha 59 brings a large expansion to the western side of the map, opening up access to a large new lake, streams, ponds, waterfalls, forested regions and beachfront.

It is important the world continues to scale in size, as I want long-haul travel and exploration to play a role leading into future features and development.

Here's a link for a full 4k image of the world map.
[h2]New Trees:[/h2]
I've implemented a new system for trees, moving away from the native SpeedTree libraries available in the engine.

They support wind simulation via vertex animation (with no skeletal meshes), seasonal changes, large-scale instance meshing, etc. They are still a work in progress, but are performant and give me much more control over the code rather than working around a black-box feature set.

The new area is mostly populated with new tree species using the new code. Eventually I hope to transition the old trees on the rest of the map as I introduce more species.

[h2]Cave Access?[/h2]
As with the prior South-East expansion, the new area adds a lot more underwater space (including deep water). However there is currently no cave access from the Western lake (yet). This will certainly come in the future.

[h2]New Landscape Rock Geometry:[/h2]
In the new area I'm using some new techniques to blend rocky ground detail into the landscape geometry.

This does increase the polygonal complexity to the scene rendering, but I'm using some aggressive LOD and lighting transitions to maintain high performance.

The new geometry caused problems with the AI pathing systems, so needed to be updated to accommodate.
[h2]Triangular Building Pieces:[/h2]
There are now triangle variants of foundations and ceilings. They are equilateral in dimension (with each side being the width of a full wall). So 60° at each corner, meaning 6 would complete a circle.

I think these new pieces will open up a lot of new creativity for base designs, so I'm curious to see what players will create!

[h2]Fruit/Veg Will Now Perish![/h2]
As hinted at previously, fruit and veg will now perish overtime. This may be controversial, but was necessary and well overdue.

How the system works:

Items will perish one at a time from a stack.
Splitting the stack would result in both stacks continuing from the same perish state.
Adding an item (or stack) to a stack will result in the stack acquiring whichever had the lower perish state.

In addition, when a stack is at a low count, it will take longer to perish (an example shown above). I think this is an appropriate way to balance/decrease the penalty of food perishing while looting, while still maintaining the necessity for preservation methods when at larger scales of production.

Meats and cooked meals still don't show meters. This is because they still maintain independent perish times for every item in a stack. So I would have to either think of a way to present up to 10 perish times for a single item in the inventory, or switch them over to use the same logic as fruit/veg.

[h2]Vegetable Chutney:[/h2]
To assist in food preservation, players can now prepare Vegetable Chutney in the oven. The recipe requires a boiling pan. Chutney does not require refrigeration and can be kept indefinitely.

The glass jar is returned when eating the Chutney, so each jar only needs to be crafted once.

[h2]Dropped Kit Expiry Time Increased:[/h2]
Due to expanded world space, player dropped kits will now last for 14 minutes on normal (previously 10 mins) and 20 minutes on easy (previously 15 minutes). On hardcore there are no dropped kits (unless on dedicated servers whereby there is a 2 minute timer).

[h2]Increased Shadow Distance:[/h2]
I've increased the dynamic shadow casting by around 3x. This gives much greater depth to the scene presentation, especially in densely forested areas:

[h2]New Cosmetics:[/h2]
For players that wish to further support the game, some new skins have been added to game's Steam Store Page.
[h3]Winter Jacket Snow Camo and Shirt Woodland Camo:[/h3]

[h3]Revolver Nickel Plating and Black Grip:[/h3]

[h3]Rifle Black Camo and Gold Trim:[/h3]

[h2]New Language Supported - Finnish:[/h2]
Thanks so much to Pewtsku and J4ntteri for providing the translation :)

[h2]Other Notable Fixes:[/h2]

Increased FOV to 100 (previously 95). I will add ability to customize this in the future.
Added culling for distant landscape, reducing a lot of draw calls (better FPS performance).
Increased number of beehives during the summer months.
Greatly reduced noticeable texture seams for snowy terrain on the landscape.
Attempted to resolve reported bug of river sounds cutting out audio.
Changed campfire repair recipe to only require sticks.
Fixed compass showing during loading screen.

[h2]New Trailer:[/h2]
If you missed the previous minor-update post, please checkout the new game trailer:
https://youtu.be/-Dx5qabDXdI

Discord invite: https://discord.gg/zyy4jQs

Twitter: @playSubsistence
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playsubsistence/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkQZ7vkTiqetTC0_8umY2Pg
Steam Forums: https://steamcommunity.com/app/418030/discussions/

[h3]Hosting Your Own Server:[/h3]
If you would like to host your own dedicated server, I would recommend Nitrado (as I work closely with their team to support the game). You are also free to host on your own hardware, and the server files are freely available on SteamCMD.

You can view a detailed guide to hosting here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2201638184

Continued Translation Support Credits (in no particular order): Thank you so much for the support.
Spanish (David Lascasas)
Hungarian (Erb Ármin)
Portuguese BR (Thiago Schumacke)
German (Philipp J. Rackl (LPCaiser))
Italian (Marcello Brancaccio, Federico D. Ravagli)
French (Anthony Charrault)
Czech (Dílna U mnicha)
Dutch (Damster_NL)
Danish (Jesper Vestergaard Bæk)
Russian (FRAME)
Turkish (Soulkast, Çagla Gurbet)
Swedish (Mattias Gustavsson)
Norwegian (Christer Djuvik, Svein Tore Stegemoen)
Romanian (VaeVictis)
Estonian (Streamerize)
Polish (Robertus Lubin)
Ukrainian (RoW-Team)
Latvian (Martins Plucis)
Finnish (Pewtsku and J4ntteri)